I don’t have time to transcribe this one. But here’s Tom on why you should vote for him today.

Tom Ammiano – Why Vote For Me As Mayor (2 MB)

I don’t have time to transcribe this one. But here’s Tom on voting “Yes” on Prop B.

How I’m voting this Tuesday
This footage is from October 31, 2003.
I took advantage of having access to Tom Ammiano in person Friday to ask him about the other propositions on the ballot. What he said makes sense to me. I hope it will be helpful to you in making your decisions about tomorrow’s elections.
Video clip – Why YES On Prop B (1 MB)

How I’m voting this Tuesday
This footage is from October 31, 2003.
I took advantage of having access to Tom Ammiano in person Friday to ask him about the other propositions on the ballot. What he said makes sense to me. I hope it will be helpful to you in making your decisions about tomorrow’s elections.
Video clip – Why YES On Prop d (2 MB)
Lisa: “What about D? Something about a small business commission?”
Tom: “Eh. You know, it takes the commission that now exists and makes it a charter commission, and people who are involved in small business feel that it would give them more status and a little more juice. I think the jury is out about whether or not that could happen, because a lot of times things are just very decorous. But perhaps it could work, and I’m not against small businesses so, ya know, fine.”

This is another great example of why I think Tom Ammiano would be a great Mayor.
He has great reasons for not wanting N to pass, and an excellent alternative to it: providing health benefits and disability benefits for all taxi drivers (not just disability for only drivers with medallions – as N proposes).
More details below.

How I’m voting this Tuesday
This footage is from October 31, 2003.
I took advantage of having access to Tom Ammiano in person Friday to ask him about the other propositions on the ballot. What he said makes sense to me. I hope it will be helpful to you in making your decisions about tomorrow’s elections.
Video clip – Why YES On Prop N (5 MB)
Lisa: “What about N? For taxi permits…”
Tom: “You know, my father was a cab driver in the 50’s and 60’s before he died. There were no benefits. There were no health benefits. When he died, we had to practice an Italian-American custom called La Boost (sp?) where people actually come to the funeral, which you don’t pay for yet, and they make a donation. And I thought ‘ya know, nobody has to go through this.’ Particularly Taxi drivers.
However, this is a very self-serving avaricious measure that I think is very dishonest. In the world of taxi drivers there are people with permits and then there are people without permits, and this is a way to get the people with permits only some kind of disability benefits. It really shuts the door on anyone else, and I don’t like that. And I tried to get something on the ballot that would encompass not just the permit (medallion) holders, but the other drivers too. To me, there was a way that we could have done it for everyone.
So I’m not supporting N because I think it is dishonest. I don’t want to deny disability to people, particularly with my personal background, but there is another way to do it. And by the way, my office worked with the waring parties, and their very very very angry with each other and don’t talk to each other a lot. Within the taxi industry there are three or four factions and we are moving towards providing health benefits for all taxi drivers. And if it ever passes, and we get the cooperation of everyone, I’d like to call it the “Joe Ammiano Law,” because that was my dad.
Lisa: “So that one you’re stronger about. You think it’s a big NO on that one.”
Tom: “Oh yes. It’s going to be very harmful. And we’ll just leave it at that.”

How I’m voting this Tuesday
This footage is from October 31, 2003.
I took advantage of having access to Tom Ammiano in person Friday to ask him about the other propositions on the ballot. What he said makes sense to me. I hope it will be helpful to you in making your decisions about tomorrow’s elections.
Video clip – Why YES On Prop C (3 MB)
Lisa: “So what about C? About having the City Controller monitor city services?”
Tom: “You know, Jake Mc Goldrick is going to kill me for this. I’m not real happy with this one. They cleaned it up quite a bit and, ya know, I’m OK with it. But personally, if it didn’t pass, I wouldn’t kill myself. It’s one of those things where a conservative group, called S.O.S., wanted to, in their words “have more open government and honest government,” but it really is a little more self-serving than that. I think Jake Mc Goldrick did a really good job of cleaning it up and making it palatable. It will give the Controller of our city the ability to audit independently, and I think that’s a fine idea. However, I think there are better ways to do it. We could have a General Manager that’s elected. The Controller is appointed by the Mayor for 10 years. We have a very good controller. However, I still think there’d be a better way to do what this measure is supposed to accomplish. But I will vote for it.”
Lisa: “You will vote for it?”
Tom: “Yeah. But it’s not one of my favorites.”

How I’m voting this Tuesday
This footage is from October 31, 2003.
I took advantage of having access to Tom Ammiano in person Friday to ask him about the other propositions on the ballot. What he said makes sense to me. I hope it will be helpful to you in making your decisions about tomorrow’s elections.
Video clip – Why YES On Prop E (6 MB)
Lisa: “E. It just says “ethics reform.”
Tom: “Oh. This is good. I sponsored this with the Ethics Commission. Basically, it’s about conflict of interest. A lot of times, people will be in city government such as a department head, or a commissioner, or the mayor, or a supervisor, and then they no longer do that. But, because their faces are recognizable. Because the juice is still there, even though they’re gone, they have undue influence on decision making, and they also get more access, and they can also bring people in. So this really tightens that and says if you were a mayor or supervisor or commissioner or department head or have been involved in any way on that level, you can not come back and lobby for issues. In otherwords, giving you an insider’s advantage. If we’re really gonna have honesty in government, we need a lot of campaign reform and we need a lot of ethics reform. And Prop E addresses that, and I think it’s great. We should be very proud of it.”
Lisa: “Can you give an example of when that kind of thing happens?”
Tom: “Well let’s say Mayor Willie Brown will, after 8 years, no longer be the Mayor, but he certainly will have juice with certain commissioners because he appointed them, and their term goes beyond his. And so it wouldn’t be (can’t make out exact word) of him currently to give them a call and say ‘I want to introduce you to this developer’ etc. and so forth. There’s been a number of supervisors, Michael Yahi comes to mind, who, after they were not voted back in office, you start to see them in the halls, using some of the connections they had with the different departments to lobby for certain issues.”
Lisa: “So it would make that illegal?”
Tom: “Yes.”
Lisa: “Isn’t that just going to drive it ‘behind close doors’ so to speak?”
Tom: “No, actually, it’s going to flush it out. This comes on the heels of the disclosure and the Sunshine that we also sponsored. So, some people would say ‘alright, I will disclose that I, as a previous supervisor, went and talked to so and so. So what?’ So alright fine, now you disclose it, and now we say because of the position that you held before, it’s a conflict of interest defined by the State, and particularly by San Francisco, in a very stringent manner. You can’t do it. But the average citizen should be able to come in and have the same kind of access that you’re trying to say you have because you used to be a super or mayor. So it really does level that playing field.”

How I’m voting this Tuesday
This footage is from October 31, 2003.
I took advantage of having access to Tom Ammiano in person Friday to ask him about the other propositions on the ballot. What he said makes sense to me. I hope it will be helpful to you in making your decisions about tomorrow’s elections.
Video clip – Why YES On Prop I (4 MB)
Lisa: “How about ‘I’? Child care for low income families.”
Tom: “I think it’s a very good concept, but I also think this was put on the ballot as an opportunistic measure. It doesn’t really talk about how it’s gonna be done or where all the money is gonna come from. It’s like, you know, alright, I’m gonna put something on the ballot like “be nice to old people,” “don’t beat up the disabled,” “let’s have childcare.” Well, who’s gonna vote against that? But the real proof in the pudding is how are you gonna make it happen, and what was your background? Now everyone has religion lately about public schools, because it’s the mayor’s race. Alright fine, we don’t need purism and motivation. I’m the person in terms of public education with my background in education as a Board of Education member. My own kid went to public schools. My late lover taught for fifteen years. I don’t feel proprietary, but I certainly feel prepared. And what we have proposed is a 60 million dollar set aside from the city government rewriting its mission for universal preschool, for arts and music for libraries in health, and for PE and sports, and that’s going to be a charter amendment I hope to see on the ballot in March. And I think the buzz out there is that this is really a good thing for our public schools in San Franciso. So in terms of Prop I, I think it’s a nice gesture. Again, pass or fail it’s not going to make that much of a difference.”
Lisa: “So you would say No? To vote No on it?”
Tom: “No! I would say “fine.”
Lisa: “To go ahead and vote for it?”
Tom: “Yes. But understand that it’s not always going to meet with the promises, and that it’s a Mayoral election device too.”

How I’m voting this Tuesday
This footage is from October 31, 2003.
I took advantage of having access to Tom Ammiano in person Friday to ask him about the other propositions on the ballot. What he said makes sense to me. I hope it will be helpful to you in making your decisions about tomorrow’s elections.
Video clip – Why YES On Prop L (6 MB)
Lisa: “How ’bout Prop L. The minimum wage.”
Tom: “Very very good. I championed “living wage” as a supervisor. It took me two years and I got it done, along with providing health benefits for people who do contracting work for the city. I think that Prop L is a very logical next step. It’s the brainchild actually of Barry Hermanson, whose a small business man who understands the market in a way that doesn’t rip people off. And he knows that if you pay people more than the minimum wage, which is a ridiculous amount of $6.50, that they’ll have a few extra nickels in their pocket, and that they’ll tend to spend that in the neighborhoods they live with. And I will say this about Gonzales, he sponsored it with Barry. And they both make a very very good point which is “hey, when there’s a downturn in the economy, it’s not just Chevron that hurts.” It’s the janitors and the people who are waiters and waitresses and the people doing physical labor, and “hello?” what are we going to do about them?”
So this is a very very reasonable minimal step to at least improving the quality of life issues for working people so they don’t always have to choose “should I get some medicine? or should I put food on my table.” And yes it gets that dramatic for some people.
Lisa: “And just to play devil’s advocate. What about the argument that it would somehow put business out of business and blah blah blah.”
Tom: “It’s an old saw. And if you were paying what you should be paying in the beginning, you wouldn’t even be thinking that way. You get better worker morale. You get more productivity if people are making a more decent wage. And we… give exemptions to smaller businesses. The deal is that when people have more money to spend that actually revitalizes the economy. So the argument that it would hurt business is really only coming from a very small sector who’s really not interested in sharing any kind of profits. That’s mostly the restaurant association and some of the businesses who back Newsom, and it’s a phony argument.”